Burkhard Beins / Erik Carlsson / Jim Denley / Mats Gustafsson / Steven Hess / Jon Mueller / Espen Re - Bridges

This record is pretty mysterious! I've picked it out of the review pile because I liked the look of its outrageously elaborate packaging and totally gorgeous picture discs. Pretty surprising to me that they'd go to such lengths to make it look this snazzy when it's only an edition of 250 but, well, I guess it'll make a couple of hundred people very happy. I'm struggling to find out much information about this, but as far as I can gather each side of this double LP contains a different duet between two giants of the experimental minimal improv scene. One side, for example, sees Nate Wooley go toe to toe with Mats Gustafsson, one's got Burkhard Beins and Jon Mueller, one's got Jim Denley and Espen Reinertsen, and the other has Erik Karlsson and Steven Hess. Upon closer inspection I've noticed that each duet is international, with the artists recording their respective parts geographically separately and then combining them at a later date. I guess that explains the whole 'Bridges' concept. I'm not sure if they did it with live link-ups or if one did it after the other or what but the overall results seem pretty cohesive, with the artists carving out womb-like sound spaces to reflect in. Everything here seems to be quite therapeutic and casually paced, there's nothing that'll fry your brain here, just texture compositions for solitary immersion. To be honest these things look so good that if you don't like the music you could always frame 'em.